Joan Targ

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Joan Fischer Targ, (c. 1938 - 1998) was a pioneer in computing education. She was the older sister of chess champion Bobby Fischer.

[edit] Early years

Born in Moscow, her mother, Regina Wender, was a naturalized American citizen of German Jewish^[1] descent, born in Switzerland but raised in St. Louis, Missouri. Regina spoke seven languages fluently and was a teacher, registered nurse and eventually physician.^[2] Her first husband was Hans-Gerhardt Fischer, a German biophysicist. The couple married in 1933 in Moscow, U.S.S.R., where Regina was studying medicine at the First Moscow Medical Institute. Since Wender was Jewish, she left Europe, separating from her husband, and raising her children on her own, at one point living in a shelter for single mothers. Around 1948, the family moved to Brooklyn, New York, where Regina worked as an elementary school teacher and nurse. They lived above in an apartment above a candy store. In 1949, the young Joan bought a chess set in the candy store, and her younger brother Bobby Fischer, aged 6, became so obsessed with it that their mother even took him to a psychiatrist about it.^[3]

[edit] Adulthood

Targ lived in the San Francisco Bay Area, acquiring a Masters degree in education at the College of Notre Dame in Belmont.

She founded a number of innovative programs to study the teaching of computer literacy, including programs in the Palo Alto School District, as well as the Institute of Microcomputing in Education at Stanford University.

Her educational techniques included the creation of systems whereby a student, trained by peers in a basic course in computer programming, would then tutor the next students.

Targ died of a cerebral hemorrhage at the age of 60.

[edit] Notes

[edit] References

• Obituary
• The Almanac: Joan Fischer Targ Obituary (1998-06-10). Retrieved on 2007-03-14.
• Anything to Win: The Mad Genius of Bobby Fischer, television documentary, produced by Frank Sinton and Anthony Storm